Glass products, such as glass bottles, are inspected for defects (e.g., scratches, bubbles, and foreign objects) with visible light after being slowly cooled in a slow-cooling furnace (at a so-called cold end). Typically, as described in Patent Literature (PTL) 1 to PTL 3 listed below, systems used in such inspections illuminate a glass product with a projector while rotating the product, capture the reflected or transmitted light with a camera, and process the resulting image to discover a defect.
PTL 4 to PTL 6 disclose systems and methods for measuring the volume or weight of a gob to be placed in a mold, in producing a large quantity of glass products, such as glass bottles, in a molding machine.
Additionally, PTL 6 describes a technique that involves comparing three-dimensional data of a gob shape with data of a desirable gob shape and adjusting the gob shape to the desirable gob shape to improve the quality of the resulting glass product.